Yolanda Díaz, vice president of the Spanish government: “The Galicians of Argentina have the fate of Galicia in their hands”

Yolanda Díaz is the second vice president of the Spanish government, minister of Labor and leader of Sumar, the party that occupied the space to the left of the socialists when Podemos began to dissolve. Díaz, who participated Clarion by video conference from Madrid, He was the architect of a reform that changed the history of Spanish labor managing, for the first time, to generate employment with weak economic growth rates and causing the rate of temporary work to collapse in an economy heavily dependent on sectors such as tourism, anchored to the use of temporary work.

He defends with conviction the need to reduce working hours without reducing wages and that Europe does not return to the austerity policies of the last decade. Regional elections will be held in Galicia on February 18 and Galicians from Argentina will have the right to vote, around 200,000, it could be decisive. Given that polls show a tie between the conservatives of the Popular Party and a possible left-wing coalition in which his party would participate, Díaz asks the “Galicians of Argentina” not to be left without a vote.

-Europe emerged from the 2008 crisis with adjustment policies and from the pandemic with an increase in public spending. The result in terms of economic growth and employment supports the second option. Why was it changed?

-The way out of the financial crisis was a mistake, a country, Greece, was abandoned due to dogmatism, as a strong message of respect for austerity and the politics of pain. In 2020, public policies are being put in place to protect European citizens in the face of a health, economic and social crisis, but the debate has not been easy. I remember those meetings of the European Union Labor Ministers and how difficult it was for us to prevail over the Economy Ministers. In 2020, the positions of the European democracies that did not want to harm their people won again. The Spanish position was fundamental, for example in the defense of the SURE program (to support unemployment benefits with European funds), with the ERTE (temporary unemployment mechanisms) and because we did not want to return to collapse, to democratic disaffection and did not want correct the economic and social disaster of those policies based on austericide. Time has proved us right.

-That crisis saw the birth and growth of right-wing and left-wing populism. On the right they continued to grow and gain power, but on the left they sank. In his ideological space in Europe only his SUMAR party remains. Why?

-Those parties are born in what I call the contestation phase, a phase in which a citizen split occurs, of very deep disaffection and with the perception that those who run for office do not govern. Therefore, that task had to be contested. A lot of time has passed and there is a substantial change, of social unease, which is not enough to meet the challenge. Now we are in times of construction and useful policies to support citizens, policies like those that saved more than three million jobs in Spain during the last crisis. It’s not such an attractive moment from a discursive point of view, it’s more about building and becoming a useful tool for citizens.

-The labor reform allows the Spanish economy to create jobs while growing very little.

-In Spain they told us a big lie. In 40 years, 52 labor reforms have been implemented, four of which are structural, which have always moved towards deregulation, towards deprotection, leading to easy dismissals. This was not scientific and produced effects contrary to those officially sought. Our reform is based on economic knowledge and science and modifies the deficit elements of the Spanish labor market, in particular temporary work and precariousness. Furthermore, it is based on a strategy of increasing wages (in 5 years the minimum wage has increased by 54%) which increases tax collection.

-He wants to reduce the working week to 37.5 hours and then to 35 hours without cutting salaries.

-Because our strategy is to continue to increase wages and therefore distribute productivity. We launch the creation of a National Productivity Council to distribute productivity between employers and workers, because at a time when productivity was growing by 15.3%, wages were growing by 1.2%. This is deeply unfair. We will increase wages by distributing productivity.

-If Europe turned to the right in the next elections, as the polls say, what would happen to European politics?

-What happened with Brexit in the United Kingdom and with Milei in Argentina would happen. If the answer we give to policies is the same as that given by the far right, then the far right will win.

-Dozens of Spanish multinationals have interests in Argentina. How do you see the situation after Javier Milei’s victory?

-I’m absolutely worried. It’s been a short time since the elections, but we are already seeing what is happening and I think it can happen in terms of economic and trade relations and between the two countries, just as it happened with Bolsonaro’s Brazil (a pariah in Europe).

-Galicia will vote on February 18th. The right has almost always governed. Is it a particularly conservative region?

-Galicia is no longer conservative, but votes for progressive parties in national elections and stays at home, facilitating the conservative majority, in regional elections. Many people believe that change is impossible, that there is a moral defeat, people abstain because they believe we cannot win. I invite the 200,000 Galicians and Galicians present in Argentina to go and vote because those who are at Xunta today are Milei’s apprentices. They have in their hands the possibility of changing the destiny of Galicia.

-Last week you met Pope Francis in Rome. Three weeks before the elections it doesn’t seem like a coincidence.

-I think we have a wonderful relationship (the 75 minute hearing was very long by normal standards). We had a very long conversation in which we talked about countless problems facing the world.